With apologies to Modest Mouse, we’ve got some good news for people who love bad news: Nintendo’s upcoming remaster of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door apparently depicts transphobia — which could mean confirmation that fan-favorite ghost girl Vivian is finally, canonically, transgender.
Originally released on GameCube back in 2004, The Thousand-Year Door has long been lauded by fans as the pinnacle of the Paper Mario series, and one of the best games in the whole plumber-centric franchise. Details were scant when a remastered version of the title was first announced back in September, but a new preview in the Daily Mirror this week shed light on what we can expect from the spiffed-up rerelease. Solidly in the “pros” column, we have updated graphics and audio, all-new side characters (as detailed in another preview on Polygon), and… the return of a plot thread that hinges on some literally cartoonish transmisogyny.
That’s a weird thing to be happy about, huh? Maybe we should back up.
One of The Thousand-Year Door’s most enduring elements is its clever writing, which, as the Mirror noted, carries more complex and mature themes than many other Mario games. Fans are quick to praise its high-stakes plot, humor, and rich variety of party members, ranging from the femme fatale spoof Ms. Mowz to the drag queen-coded cloud spirit Madame Flurrie. But in a field of standout characters, Vivian — a cute little purple ghost with a striped hat — has long stood as a favorite for LGBTQ+ gamers, due to an element of her backstory that was cut in the game’s original English translation.
Vivian is a member of the Shadow Sirens, three ghosts who serve as secondary antagonists for much of the game. But her sisters, Beldam and Marilyn, regularly belittle and insult Vivian, eventually driving her to join Mario’s team. In the Japanese version of The Thousand-Year Door, Beldam and Marilyn’s hatred is rooted in transphobia: Vivian describes herself with feminine pronouns and says she is “proud to have become a woman,” but her sisters are outraged by this, insisting that she is a man and often threatening to punish her. That dialogue was cut from most localized releases of the game, including the English version, in which the Sirens reject Vivian simply because they believe Vivian thinks she’s prettier than they are.
